Getting the message

Interoperability and standards are driving a lot of new technologies, and PulsePoint Communications is trying to meet those forces with its new enhanced functionality VoiceServer products. The company, which has technology partners Microsoft and Dialogic on its side, said it has completed extensive testing of its Enhanced Application Platform. GTE has also completed standardization testing of the equipment and plans a national deployment of the product, according to PulsePoint officials.

The VoiceServer products, which are being delivered to Pacific Bell, will provide statewide messaging across messaging platforms from different vendors. Interoperability is intended to make deployment of next generation platforms easier with standards acting as a guide.

"The services they are offering are pretty good, but they are having to do a little encouragement," said Megan Gurley, a research analyst with The Yankee Group. "They are basically saying, 'We will put these services on [a platform], but for the cool stuff, you need to upgrade to standards-based open architecture.' They learned the hard way before by rolling out a system that worked only with legacy-now this works with both the public switched telephone network and IP networks." PulsePoint is offering to help carriers migrate to its system, she added.

"For messaging [to be complete], it must go beyond one box and one company," said Pam Thompson, vice president of marketing for PulsePoint. The company had to take a number of steps to ensure that, she said, as did Unisys, the other enhanced services provider for Pacific Bell. "First, we had to make the area codes transparent to users. Second, we added the Spanish language. And third, we adopted the voice profile for Internet messaging standard."

This migration is similar to the PC industry 10 years ago, which let software developers work around the standard, Gurley said.